perfidious
/pɚˈfɪdi.əs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.09 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of, pertaining to, or representing perfidy; disloyal to what should command one's fidelity or allegiance.
Example Sentences
- "TRINCULO (speaking about Caliban): By this light, a most perfidious and drunken / monster: when his god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle."
- "The perfidious Ricimer soon became dissatisfied with Anthe'mius, and raised the standard of revolt."
- "[S]he knew Huntly for the ambitious traitor he was, a man peculiarly perfidious and self-seeking."
- "When the Nazis branded Feininger a "degenerate artist" in 1937, he left 54 paintings for safekeeping with a Bauhaus friend named Hermann Klumpp. After the war, and for the rest of Feininger's life, the perfidious Klumpp refused to give them back."
- "Enraged, the 2010 Nobel literature laureate thundered that he was “flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can find its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review” - a “slanderous and perfidious” instance of the convergence of posh and pop that his book inveighs against."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Italic *per Latin per Proto-Indo-European *bʰeydʰ-der. Latin fidēs Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *-os Archaic Latin -os Latin -us Latin perfidus Proto-Indo-European *-(i)yós Proto-Italic *-ijos Proto-Italic *-ios Old Latin -ios Latin -ius Latin -ia Latin perfidia Proto-Indo-European *h₃ed- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *h₃édosder.? Proto-Italic *-ŏ̄dsos? Old Latin -ōssus Latin -ōsus Latin perfidiōsusbor. English perfidious From Latin perfidiōsus (“treacherous”), from perfidia. By surface analysis, perfidy + -ous.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: perfidiōsus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɚˈfɪdi.əs/
- British English: /pəˈfɪdi.əs/
Inflected Forms
more perfidious (comparative)
most perfidious (superlative)